Circus Mirrors and Pot Smoke
by scarlettshazam
Summary: When Kenny finds himself in need of help, he tends to accidentally end up with Craig Tucker. Crenny oneshot.


**Soundtrack: Good Friday – Why? **

"Hey Kenny," Karen whispers from beside him, "I'm really hungry." Her stomach growls loudly just as she says this, and Kenny's own echoes shortly thereafter. They haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday – they split a package of Poptarts. Kenny gave Karen half of his when she was still hungry. Now they're woozy from not eating. Kenny doesn't want to move. He's already checked his backpack six times to see if he'd hidden any snacks in there, and he'll keep checking, as though a candy bar or bag of chips will appear like magic to feed them.

Fuck.

Their mom lost her job last week. The electric is out. It's fucking freezing and he's lying with Karen in his bed, tucked under the covers and shivering together. Fucking January. The temperature outside has dipped to well below zero, and inside, it isn't much better.

The water's been out for a few days. Kenny is several levels of greasy and disgusting. He smells like cigarette smoke and body odor. Karen at least is trying to mask her smell with cheap body spray she got on some birthday or another.

Kenny has reached the tipping point. It's more for Karen than for himself. He could sit here and waste away forever. He'd just die from starvation and come back. It's not like that hasn't happened before, and he's sure that it will happen again. But Karen – he doesn't know if Karen can die and come back, and frankly, he doesn't want to know. He wants to protect her from having to face all the death that he has in fifteen years of life. He wants to keep her from being hungry, and sad, and alone. He can't just let things fucking be like this.

Their cellphones haven't been paid for, naturally. That's one thing that well-off folks _really_ take for granted, the usefulness of a cellphone. He could call Craig up and warn him that he's coming.

He'd go to his friends, maybe, but he's embarrassed. He always is. He doesn't want their mothers to fuss over him like he's one of their own. It makes him uncomfortable. Craig's family is different. They're detached. They don't give a shit if Craig has a bunch of starving, scrappy kids hanging around their house. Kenny's used to people that don't give a shit. It's what he knows.

So he goes to Craig.

"Come on, we're gonna go to the Tuckers'," Kenny mumbles, even though he doesn't want to leave the blankets. They don't have decent winter coats and it's fucking freezing. Maybe they should wear the blankets.

"We look fucking stupid," Karen complains, after Kenny has fashioned them both blanket-cape-shrug-things.

Kenny replies, "Yeah, but at least we won't get hypothermia or some shit."

"It's a five minute walk, Kenny," protests Karen.

"You can die in five minutes," Kenny responds knowingly, "and besides. You know their parents work night shifts. They won't be around. And Craig and Ruby have seen us looking worse."

Another benefit to going to the Tucker household for help: Karen is best friends with Ruby Tucker. Ruby and Karen get along. They fucking love each other. They're not like Kenny and Craig, who just about hate each other but hang out together anyway because nobody else understands what it's like to be poor as shit and alone in the world. Except that unlike Kenny's parents, Craig's parents actually fucking work. Craig says he's only ever had their electricity turned off once, and it was when he and his sister were really little. Ruby doesn't remember it, he says, but he remembers.

Kenny doesn't know where their parents are, and frankly doesn't care. He kind of wishes that Kevin were here. His brother's a dick, but he's not entirely stupid – he knows how to get out of sticky situations. Or, he did. At one point. That was before he left a few months ago. They haven't heard from him at all. Kenny figures that Kev is probably dead as shit. He wishes that he felt bad about that. He doesn't.

Kenny figures that it's probably somewhere around ten at night, but he can't know for certain without a functioning clock, and he knows that hunger could be tricking him. Time always goes so much slower when you need food.

They don't bother locking the front door of their house on the way out into the street. The McCormicks don't own shit worth stealing. Everybody in town knows that.

Karen fumbles blindly, reaching for his hand. Kenny provides, giving her fingers an exhausted squeeze. Her hands are as cold as his are, and he feels like his fingers are about to freeze and fall off.

By the time that Kenny rings the doorbell at the Tucker house, he and Karen are shaking like hell. He's never wanted to be warm so desperately in his life, or at least that's what it feels like. It feels like that every time he thinks he might die from cold and hunger. He should have brought his sister here sooner. Kenny can rough it, and although he knows that Karen can push through when the time calls for it, he doesn't want her to be forced to do so. He wants her to live well. He wants her to never have to be afraid.

This is so fucking unfair.

Craig answers the door what feels like an eternity later. He looks much more comfortable than they do, wearing sweats and a thick hoodie. He doesn't say anything when he sees them standing there, but merely opens the door wider and inclines his head to tell them to come in.

"Thanks, dude," Kenny mumbles.

When Craig shuts the door behind them, they're enveloped in warmth. There's heat on in here.

Craig calls, "Ruby!"

"Fuck off!" is heard faintly from upstairs. Kenny wonders if they've had an argument. It wouldn't surprise him. Craig and his sister are always fighting.

"Fuck you," Craig shouts back, "Karen is here!"

No biting retort follows. A few seconds later, Kenny hears a door creak open, and Ruby sidles down the stairs. Karen tears her hand out of Kenny's and greets her friend with a hug. Kenny's hand is so cold that he didn't realize his sister had still be holding onto it.

Craig nudges Kenny toward the stairs and says lowly, "Let's go upstairs."

Kenny knows what 'let's go upstairs' means. It means that they're going to have sex.

It started a few months ago. It had been an experiment. A joke, really. Kenny was grimy from not showering. Their water heater was busted and the cold days had just started. He didn't want to be wet _and_ cold. That makes cold twenty times worse. He found himself at Craig's later in the night, and jested that he'd trade a blow job for a hot shower. He thought that Craig would laugh.

Craig hadn't laughed. In fact, he'd said, "Would you?"

And Kenny had replied, "Sure, I guess," despite the fact that he'd never laid eyes on a dick beside his own – outside of porno tapes, of course – because a hot shower actually sounded kind of fantastic, and frankly, he was curious.

The first time was kind of gross, and definitely awkward. Kenny got come all over his face and t-shirt because he spat it out. It tasted fucking nasty. He's gotten better about it with practice, but still, after a few blow jobs, he'd offered up his ass instead because it seemed like he'd have to do a lot less work. He'd discovered in the process that he likes getting worked over, and that Craig is a lot less nonchalant about sex than he'd initially seemed. He still feigns apathy. He probably always will, because feelings would make their arrangement fifty different kinds of awkward. But Kenny knows that Craig likes making them both feel good. He has a thing for teasing. Kenny has a thing for being teased. It works out well.

Craig's room is even warmer than downstairs. He keeps a space heater on at all times during the winter, claiming that he gets cold easily. It smells like Craig changed the wood shavings in his guinea pig's cage. Kenny has secretly come to enjoy the aroma of new wood shavings. Craig uses aspen. He once went on about it for ages when Kenny remarked upon the scent, blabbing about how he was suspicious of pine shavings and didn't think them good for his guinea pig's health.

Now, the smell of Craig's room makes Kenny hard. It's a knee jerk reaction. His body just does it. As soon as Kenny breathes in wood shavings and heat and aerosol deodorant, he's horny. Like a magic fucking wand, all he wants to do is have sex.

"I want to tape it," Craig says. His voice sounds more nasally than usual. Kenny wonders if he has a cold.

"What. Why?" Kenny asks.

Craig replies, "Why do you think, dumbass? So I can jerk to it later."

"You're not going to turn it into one of your stoner videos, are you? Don't you show that shit to your friends?" Kenny asks. He doesn't know how keen he is on Clyde Donovan and Token Black watching him get fucked. He actually respects those guys from time to time. Mostly Token. But sometimes Clyde. Especially recently. Clyde and Bebe are having a covert relationship that Kenny knows about because he and Bebe hang out sometimes and she has trouble keeping much of anything secret. Apparently Clyde is a nicer guy than he's willing to let on, for fear that he'll be called a pussy or something. At least the dude's treating one of Kenny's friends the way that she deserves.

"Why would I want them to know about us. You're fucking dumb, Kenny," Craig says.

"Whatever. I'll let you record it if you pay me," Kenny says. It sounds reasonable to him. If Kenny's giving Craig a little something for the spank bank, he deserves compensation.

"Bullshit. I pay you in orgasms," Craig snips testily. He tugs his hoodie over his head and gives Kenny a look that tells him he's supposed to do the same. It would seem that it's business as fucking usual in Craig Tucker's bedroom. He messes with his video camera where it's sitting on a tripod across from the bed. Kenny can't help but wonder if Craig was somehow expecting him.

Kenny says back, "You're a dick."

"You love it."

"Fuck you."

"I will."

Kenny is too hungry to be nice. He picks up the nearest object – a Rubik's cube – and hurls it at Craig's head. Sadly, his aim is off, and Craig catches the thing, one-handed. What a fucking jerk. He throws it back at Kenny while he's reaching to take off his shirt. It hits him in the chest.

Kenny snarls, "Cut that out, you stupid asshole."

"You started it," Craig shrugs. He gets behind the camera and adjusts it, moving it to face Kenny. He says, "Strip for the camera, loser."

"Not if you call me a loser, you loser."

Why are they arguing? Kenny just wants to be fucked and shower and maybe raid Craig's fridge after the assbag falls asleep. He knows Craig hates it when he gets into their food, but he's so fucking hungry that it's making him lightheaded.

"Ugh, fuck you. Fine," Kenny says, because Craig doesn't seem to be in a particularly accommodating mood tonight. Kenny lifts his shirt by the hem and makes exaggerated movements with his hips, swaying them back and forth. "That satisfy you, you goddamned pervert?"

"Pretty much," remarks Craig.

Kenny rolls his eyes and stops the theatrics. He undoes his fly and kicks off his pants without his earlier shimmying. He's tired. He wants sex.

"Hard for me already, I see."

"Only you, babe," Kenny mutters sarcastically.

"You wanna smoke a bowl?" asks Craig. He's still behind the camera, but he's stripping off his sweatpants. Kenny can see from here that he's hard, too. What a fucking hypocrite.

"God yes," Kenny says.

"You're such a fucking stoner," accuses Craig.

"Says the dude that keeps weed next to his guinea pig's cage," Kenny slices back.

"Yeah, but you can't afford weed. Or a guinea pig," Craig says pointedly. He's taken out his pipe – the glass all swirled with yellow and blue – and is packing weed into it methodically. Craig has always sworn that there's an exact method to preparing a bowl. Kenny thinks he's full of shit.

"At least I'm not an unforgivable prick," argues Kenny.

Craig doesn't bother responding to that. They both know that he's an asshole, and neither of them want to continue discussing why, exactly, Craig Tucker is as much of an asshole as he is. Craig lights the bowl and inhales. He doesn't offer the pipe to Kenny until after his third go. Kenny would remark upon his selfishness, but he's decided to stop caring because he's too tired to give much of a damn about Craig being his usual self.

The weed gets to Kenny faster than usual, maybe because he hasn't eaten anything in over a day and a half. He feels wooshy and like his brain is filled with cotton. He's so high off of his ass that when Craig sets the pipe aside and starts nudging Kenny back toward his sloppily-made bed, Kenny doesn't bother with sass or protest, he just gives Craig a grin that feels seductive, but that is in actuality lopsided and hazy.

"You smell like a toilet," complains Craig. Well, Kenny thinks, that isn't very sexy.

"Water's off. Haven't showered," Kenny mumbles. He leans forward and licks up the column of Craig's neck, "Mm. You taste nice. I want to eat you." He thinks that those words come out of his mouth due to a combination of being absolutely starving, and being high, which has only succeeded in making him hungrier.

"You fucking slut," Craig murmurs back, but there's no malice, or any feeling at all, in his words. He's running his tongue over Kenny's collarbone, which seems more prominent than usual in the light of the single standing lamp that illuminates Craig's bedroom. Unless you count the lava lamp in the corner, which, in Kenny's current state, looks _fucking cool_.

Craig sucks on Kenny's skin, scraping his teeth over Kenny's nipples. He pays special attention to those. He always does when he's high, and Kenny won't pretend to understand why. They're just fucking nipples, after all, even if Kenny thinks that his own are pretty damn attractive. But then, he thinks of himself as pretty damn attractive overall.

Craig's tongue is on his abdomen. He's sliding lower, lapping teasing licks along the elastic band of Kenny's underwear. He's teasing, like he always does. Craig has never, and probably will never, put Kenny's cock in his mouth. He's made this clear several times, and Kenny has made it clear in return that he thinks Craig is being stupid and that he should loosen up a bit. Dicks are pretty fun to play with, after all.

Because Kenny is feeling obnoxious, he thrusts his clothed erection up against the side of Craig's face. Craig lifts his eyes only enough to glare, hard, before returning to making hickeys on Kenny's stomach.

Kenny kind of wants to kiss Craig. His lips are looking unusually kissable tonight, considering that they aren't very full. They're kind of flat and sad-looking. The only problem is that he and Craig don't ever kiss. At least on the lips, that is. Craig will kiss every inch of Kenny's body except for his lips and his cock.

Kenny whines when Craig's mouth detaches from his abdomen.

"Take those off while I look for the lube," Craig orders, indicating to Kenny's worn-out boxer briefs, which are strained by his hard-on.

Kenny does as he's told, but irritably asks, "How are you always losing the fucking lube?"

"Because we usually fuck when we're high," Craig answers, "God fucking damn it. Where would high me hide the motherfucking lubricant?"

"The fridge, probably," Kenny says, because he's fucking hungry and that's where he would hide the lubricant at the moment.

Craig ignores Kenny and instead starts shuffling under his bed. He tosses out what seem to be a bunch of old school papers and extracts a shoebox. When he opens it, he gives a soft, "Fuck yeah," and displays his prize – the lube. It looks kind of nasty. Apparently, last time that they had sex, the lube must have leaked onto the outside and has left a dried-lube crust on the outside of the lid.

At least they have lube. They didn't, the first time that they decided to fuck each other. It was an unfortunate experience on Kenny's side and he was eager not to repeat it. He'd blown money on their first bottle the next day. He'd liked the sex they'd had, sort of. Not exactly. He knew that it would be good if they'd done more than spit on their hands like cowboys, but Craig doesn't so much as own a bottle of lotion. They'd been left with no option. And so it had hurt like fucking hell to have Craig's cock shoved up there, even though Craig seemed to be attempting to be nice at the time.

Still, Kenny wishes that Craig would keep their shit clean.

"What the fuck, Craig. You're supposed to take better care of our sex stuff," Kenny says.

"It's fine, you whiny bitch," Craig waves him off and opens the bottle, squeezing it onto his fingers.

Without ceremony, he hefts Kenny's legs up over his shoulders, and prods two slippery fingers inside of him.

"Oh my God. Fuck you. You're supposed to treat me like a lady," Kenny gasps. He kicks Craig's head with his left calf, which ends with Craig sinking his teeth into Kenny's leg. Kenny yowls in complaint and smacks the other side of Craig's head with his other calf. Jesus, they are fucking high.

Craig's bite drew blood. It's on Craig's thin lips. It's not much, but it's there, and it kind of makes him look like a cannibal, a cannibal in an ugly blue hat. Craig pants, "You are the furthest fucking thing from a lady, McCormick."

"Suck my dick, Craig. I am a motherfucking queen," retorts Kenny.

Craig doesn't seem to deem this proclamation as something worthy of a response. Instead, he ducks forward and nips at Kenny's shoulder. He massages inside of Kenny, less rough than he was before. Kenny thinks that after they fucked for the first time that Craig googled how to make it feel better. Brusquely stuffing his cock in Kenny's ass was definitely not the way to go, they discovered.

Kenny relinquishes anger when Craig finds his sweet spot. And Craig, the fucker, won't let go of pressing against Kenny's prostate once he's found it. Need flushes through his body. He wiggles in closer and moans helplessly, temporarily forgetting that their sisters are around the house someplace, too. Craig presses harder, massaging deeper, and slides in a third finger.

"Fuck," Kenny hoarsely cries, "I need you."

"Of course you do," Craig says back. Kenny tries not to roll his eyes again – Craig will probably never be good with talking sexy.

Craig pulls himself back a little so that he can dispense of his boxers, tossing them onto the carpet carelessly while searching for the bottle of lube that they've somehow managed to lose in the sheets. Once it's procured, Craig slathers it onto his erection. He doesn't warn Kenny – ever – that he's going in. Craig just does it. He thrusts forward into Kenny, grunting as he does. Kenny feels full. He loves this feeling. He never feels as close to Craig as he does in these moments, when they're dripping sweat onto each other and their chests stick together from lube and come. He loves how Craig makes restrained noises. How his attitude is "fuck all" and he bangs Kenny into the fucking wall.

Kenny forgets about being hungry when the sound of skin slapping against skin echoes in the room. He wraps his legs around Craig and pulls him in closer and closer.

The tips of their noses start to touch with every surge forward that Craig makes.

Kenny thinks again about how he'd like to kiss Craig.

So he does. He catches Craig's mouth with his, sucking on Craig's lower lip. He tastes salty, like Kenny's blood and sweat. Craig moans in protest and tears his mouth away.

He demands, "What the fuck was that?"

"Sorry, Virgin Mary. I thought you knew what a fucking kiss was," Kenny gasps back. He tightens his legs' grip on Craig's slippery body. He lifts his hips up to meet every thrust of Craig's making the impact harder, making himself fuller, making stars cloud his vision.

Kenny waits for a little to see if Craig is going to work at his neglected erection, but apparently Tucker is being discourteous tonight. Kenny mutters, "I gotta do everything around here, don't I?" and seizes his own erection, pumping it up and down. He sighs in relief at the movement. He feels ready to burst, and he's making noise to express this sentiment, strained cries and guttural groans. Craig knows just how to hit him in all the right places.

Craig comes first – obnoxiously doing so inside Kenny because he gets a kick out of annoying the fuck out of him. Kenny follows not long after, coming onto his hand and both of their stomachs.

"Ungh, fuck," mumbles Kenny. He wipes come onto Craig's rocketship sheets while Craig isn't looking, and flops back into the mattress. All he has to do is wait for Craig to pass out, and then he can raid the fridge. Fuck, he is so hungry. The mere thought makes his stomach yowl. He puts his hand over it and sighs, hoping that Craig is too high and sleepy to have heard it.

Craig rolls off of Kenny, but not too far away. He asks, "When was the last time that you ate?"

"Yesterday morning," Kenny admits.

Craig stands up. He wipes himself off with a dirty t-shirt from his laundry hamper and shoves it back when he's finished, before yanking up his sweatpants. He crosses the room to turn off his video camera, still propped on a tripod and facing the bed. Kenny doesn't know whether or not to be embarrassed that he let Craig film them, and he's too high too care yet.

"Where the hell are you going, dickwad?" Kenny demands.

"Gonna order some pizza," Craig says.

"I don't need your charity," spits Kenny, even though pizza sounds fucking amazing.

Craig says, "I'm not getting it for you, you fucking freeloader. I'm getting it for me."

"Oh."

"Go shower or something. You smell like a fucking sewer," Craig dismisses him.

Kenny is almost tempted to be petulant and just roll around in Craig's sheets so they smell like body odor and sex, but the temptation of a hot shower is too much. He stumbles up out of Craig's bed and across the hall, still naked.

He turns the heat up ridiculously high, making the water so hot that it turns his skin pink. He scrubs himself raw using Craig's special dandruff shampoo because he knows it'll piss Craig off, and lingers under the water until he's afraid of what the Tucker's water bill will look like.

Kenny returns to Craig's bedroom with a towel around his waist.

Craig is sitting on his bed, which has been stripped of its sheets, with a box of pizza in his lap. It smells heavenly. Kenny's stomach growls even louder than before. He pretends it didn't happen, toweling himself dry.

"Can I borrow some clothes, dude?" Kenny asks. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Craig chew thoughtfully on the end of a cheesy, greasy slice of pizza. That rat bastard.

"Yeah, whatever," Craig says.

Kenny snags some pajamas – thin red pants patterned in airplanes and a baggy South Park Middle School gym t-shirt, which Kenny could not afford when they were in junior high. That was only two years ago. It feels like it's been a lot longer than that, to Kenny. Other people always seem to be asking where the time has gone when Kenny constantly wonders why his life isn't going by any fucking faster. Sometimes, he feels like he's hundreds of years old, stuck in this gawky, malnourished fifteen-year-old body.

"This pizza is fucking disgusting," Craig wrinkles his nose, "You can have the rest."

Kenny prides himself on knowing when Craig is lying through his crooked teeth.

This is one of those times.

He's lying about the pizza so that Kenny has something to eat.

Considering that this is Craig Tucker, that's actually pretty fucking sweet.

"Sure, whatever," Kenny shrugs. Craig knows that Kenny is lying back to him. They don't do this sort of shit for each other. This isn't some casual exchange. Craig is making a fucking statement. This is an unspoken handshake.

Neither of them says anything about it.

They probably never will speak about it.

Their eyes meet when Kenny takes the pizza box from Craig's grip.

Kenny promises himself that he'll give Craig the best damned head of his life the next time they hang out. Saying "thank you" to Craig will never be possible, because Craig is an asshole and doesn't deserve his thanks. Not audibly, anyway. But, Kenny has no problem thanking him with a little sexual reciprocation.

This is really fucking good pizza.

And with that, Kenny decides that Craig Tucker is alright. Jaded, maybe. But he's okay.


End file.
